Hillary Clinton Hits Bernie Sanders’ Pitch as ‘Artful Smear’

Sen. Bernie Sanders got pushback from Hillary Clinton when he again framed her as an establishment candidate, a friend to Wall Street, and the recipient of speaking fees for Wall Street firms during the MSNBC Feb. 4 debate.

“It is time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent weeks,” Clinton said in an apparently practiced response. As a woman, she can’t represent the establishment, she said, arguing that Wall Street is gunning for her.

Sanders began doubling down on casting Clinton as an “establishment” candidate in mid-January, when he framed her major supporters – abortion business Planned Parenthood and LGBT-rights organization the Human Rights Campaign – as part of “the political establishment.”

“What we are doing in this campaign — and it just blows my mind every day, because I see it clearly, we’re taking on not only Wall Street and the economic establishment, we’re taking on the political establishment,” he said.

“Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time and some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment,” Sanders continued. “Look, I’m going to do well and hopefully not win [just] because of establishment support.”